In May 1998, Casa Alianza/Covenant House Latin America reported that it had been working with the Procurator General's Office for more than nine months to stop the marketing of Guatemalan babies through illegal adoptions. Casa Alianza also reported that, since September 1997, it had presented, in conjunction with the Procurator General's Office, 18 criminal cases of anomalies in international adoptions. In August 1998, Casa Alianza issued a press release concerning the first case against an illegal adoption that had been won. On 18 August 1998 the baby boy was returned to his home after the fourth Judge of the First Instance of Minors delivered him to his mother. Casa Alianza considers it urgent that new laws be implemented in order to control and regulate international adoptions and recommends the ratification by Guatemala of the 1993 Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. Accordingly, before any international adoption takes place, the authorities should exhaust all possibilities of the child being adopted within its own country.

On 27 October 1998, Casa Alianza reported that it welcomed a decision, by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in Guatemala, to introduce compulsory DNA testing for all babies being adopted from Guatemala. Casa Alianza reported that the change came into affect on 1 October 1998, in order to "ensure public confidence in the international adoption process in Guatemala", according to a written statement from the Guatemalan Embassy. "DNA testing will be required for all birth mothers and orphan children in cases submitted for adjudication," according to the same release. Casa Alianza further reported that the American Embassy in Guatemala processes some 1000 international adoptions each year, around half of the total number of babies being adopted from the country. This latest decision comes after the U.S. Department of State recently confirmed that "the trafficking of babies is a serious problem in Guatemala", and is part of a package of measures being made by the Embassy's Immigration and Naturalization Service in order to reduce the number of fraudulent adoptions being made from the country. Previously the embassy only undertook DNA tests where they suspected a fraud had been committed. "The US is now following Canada's lead, which has required obligatory DNA testing for several years. Being the largest market for Guatemalan babies, we are pleased that the United States has taken this important step," commented Bruce Harris, the Regional Director of

Casa Alianza.

Casa Alianza/Covenant House Latin America

a

Erin Siegal, Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, recently donated one bankers-size box of documents about US citizens’ adoptions of Guatemalan children and adoption fraud to the National Security Archive.

These documents are the result of over thirty FOIA requests Ms. Siegal filed with the Department of State, Customs and Border Patrol, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the CIA. The requests asked for information as far back as 1980 and cover a variety of topics, ranging from information on the Casa Quivira issue (in which 46 babies were seized from a Guatemalan adoption agency due to accusations of adoption fraud), to US embassy communications regarding Celebrate Children International (a US organization imputed to have acted in violation of conditions the Hague Convention set regarding the adoptability of children).

Of particular interest in the declassified documents is information on the extent of adoption fraud in Guatemala, what the United States knew about it, and the US’s attempts to combat the problem. According to Department of State cables dating back as far as 1987, adoption fraud in Guatemala had been a lucrative business for some time. Lawyers in the country turned huge profits arranging the international adoptions of kidnapped children, women were paid to masquerade as mothers abandoning their “children” so that the children could be put up for adoption, and by March 2010, 29,400 Guatemalan children had found their way into American homes. That meant that one in every one hundred babies born in Guatemala was growing up in the US, and the adoption industry in Guatemala had become a $100 million industry.

The documents also contain information on the involvement of US-based organizations in the problem. Certain US adoption agencies with operations or relationships in Guatemala became involved in the scandal, including International Adoption Resources, which was implicated in smuggling Guatemalan children out of the country, after three mothers came forward and attested to selling their children for 750 dollars apiece.

Some documents of note in the files include:

GUATEMALA CITY — Luciany Ball’s adoption file says she was born 14 months ago by cesarean section to a single mother who gave her up so she could be raised by a loving family in a six-bedroom Indiana farmhouse.

But now some of the documents appear to be fraudulent, part of a slew of irregularities at the agency handling Luciany’s adoption that have left dozens of babies at risk of being taken from their anguished American adoptive parents. The probe also casts a cloud of uncertainty over some 2,900 pending U.S. adoptions.

Prosecutors describe their probe of Casa Quivira — considered Guatemala’s best adoption agency — as their first serious attempt to investigate a $100 million industry that has made tiny Guatemala, population 12.7 million, the largest international source of American babies after China.

The system has delivered 29,400 Guatemalan children into U.S. homes since 1990 — so many that one in every 100 Guatemalan babies born each year was growing up in an American home.

But after a months-long investigation that began with the seizure of 46 babies from Casa Quivira last August, prosecutors say they found fraud cloaking the true identities of at least nine children and that many biological mothers couldn’t be found at all.

Viele Jahre war Gunther Krichbaum Vorsitzender des EU-Ausschusses im Bundestag. Diese einflussreiche Funktion muss der CDU-Abgeordnete aus Pforzheim nun an Anton Hofreiter von den Grünen abgeben. Um einen weiteren europapolitischen Posten wird in der Union noch gerungen.

Birth parent Sue cringes in pain any time she hears a baby cry at her work in a Sydney shop. She chose her child’s family in an open adoption at nine months. It didn’t have the secrets of closed adoptions, but it has been the “most traumatic experience of her life”.

As the Christmas trees go up, the heartache spikes for anyone affected by adoption, even those raised in the happiest of adoptive families, say counsellors from the Benevolent Society.

Whether those adopted as children are now 71, like Ken Doyle of Orange, or 22 years old like Claudia from Gymea in Sydney, big family celebrations make them wonder about what could have been.

They also feel guilty for having these thoughts because of how much they love their adoptive families - and don’t want to hurt their feelings.

“Especially coming up to Christmas, big events, birthdays, you do tend to think about it more, wondering what life may have been like if I hadn’t been adopted, but then I feel guilty because I am so fortunate to have such loving family,” said Claudia, who asked for her surname to be withheld.

On Wednesday 24 November, the court ruled on two cases concerning intercountry adoption. A woman adopted from Bangladesh and a man illegally adopted from Brazil have both filed lawsuits over their adoption. The court in The Hague rejected the woman's claims on the basis of prescription and a substantive assessment. In the case of illegal adoption from Brazil, the court partially allowed the claims. According to Defense for Children, both cases show how complicated it is for intercountry adoptees to recover parentage information, restore identity and seek justice when fundamental rights have been violated.

Case 1: adoption from Bangladesh

In 1976, the then four-year-old woman and her brother were adopted from Bangladesh in the Netherlands. Following an episode of Nieuwsuur in November 2017, the woman realized that her biological mother did not abandon her children, but gave them up under false pretenses and then searched for them for years.

The woman has filed a lawsuit against Terre des Hommes (whose country director at the time had a double function and was also a representative of an adoption organization), adoption organization Wereldkinderen (then BIA) and the State. Its position is that the accused parties contributed to the adoption that allegedly took place under false pretenses. According to the woman, the accused parties also failed to properly investigate abuses in intercountry adoptions from Bangladesh and to inform those involved about this.

Terre des Hommes and Wereldkinderen invoked the fact that the woman was adopted more than twenty years ago and that her claims are therefore time-barred. The court ruled in favor of the organizations in this regard. The court also states that Terre des Hommes was not involved in this adoption at the time. The State initially also invoked statute of limitations, but withdrew it following a report that the Commission Investigating Intercountry Adoption (COIA) issued in February 2021 about abuses in intercountry adoptions and the role that the government plays in this. After substantive treatment, the court considers the woman's claim that her adoption in 1976 from Bangladesh was unlawfully established.

J&KARA Constituted After Media Reports Claimed Covid Orphans ‘On Sale’

Srinagar- The Jammu and Kashmir administration has constituted a new adoption resource agency for the erstwhile state to ensure “Care, Welfare & Protection” of the children who were orphaned by the ongoing pandemic, amidst the sensational media reports alleging that “Covid orphans” were being put up for sale by traffickers.

The agency has been set up in order to deal with the process of adopting orphans legally—especially those who lost their parents during Covid—under the guidance of the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) that was constituted in terms of the Juvenile Justice which deals with the 2015’s Care and Protection of Children Act.

Mission Director, ICPS (Integrated Child Protection Scheme) Shabnam Kamili told Kashmir Observer that formation of the new adoption resource agency will fortify the steps taken by the government for protection of orphan children especially those rendered by ongoing pandemic.

“Earlier, J&K wasn’t registered under CARA as there was no State Adoption Resource Agency (SARA) for J&K which would have ensured a better protection of orphans in the Valley.” Shabnam said.

Family and friends are ecstatic, the reactions on social media are sometimes frightening. Ryan Ramharak (29), trans and non-binary, is pregnant with his partner David (31). “I hope the people after us are treated better.”

David initially had no desire to have children. "When I came out, I thought that having children would be complicated." He himself was adopted from Brazil. “I am very happy with my adoption and my parents, but I don't want to be a father that way. It can be very complicated not to know who your biological parents are. I had written off becoming a father for myself. I'll be a nice uncle, I always thought.”

Ryan went on testosterone for a long time, which gave him beard growth, a lower voice and an angular face, but kept the uterus

Everything changed when he met Ryan over three years ago, through Tinder. He had transitioned at the age of 23. Ryan: ,,My sister had her first child at a time when I had to think about my own fertility. In the hospital I held her baby – super special, of course. Then I found out that I did want children. I wanted to grow up, not a mother.”

Ryan went on testosterone for a long time, which gave him beard growth, a lower voice and an angular face, but kept the uterus. Which for David meant that he might still be able to become a father through a biological route. And Ryan also saw it, he temporarily stopped with hormones.

Adoptees of color with White

parents struggle to talk with

their families about race

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Growing up, Angela Tucker felt like a racial impostor. She may have looked Black, but she didn’t feel that way.

The thousands of Greek orphans who were taken abroad from 1821 through the 1960’s were the topic of a recent seminar hosted by the Eastern Mediterranean Business Culture Alliance (EMBCA), which brought together experts from around the world to discuss the triumphs and tragedies of the past.

Tens of thousands of ethnically-Greek orphans — or, more often, children who were simply without fathers, due to war or other causes — were taken abroad to be adopted or put into orphanages in Turkey and Greece after the war killed so many family breadwinners and disrupted normal life in the country.

But it wasn’t only the War; it was the Ottoman Turks’ genocide of the Greeks that happened afterward, during the 30 year period from 1894-1924, that caused so many Greek children to be spirited away to other lands, most of them never to return. Much later, during the Cold War, Americans and Europeans also adopted thousands of Greek youngsters — many of them becoming completely assimilated at such a young age that they had no connection to their roots whatsoever.

Greek Orphans Event

The panel was moderated by Lou Katsos, the president of the EMBCA. Dr. Gonda Van Steen, the Director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College; Historian and Author Dr. Constantine Hatzidimitriou, and Dr. Theodosios Kyriakidis, the Chair of Pontic Studies in the School of History and Archaeology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki were the presenters.